3D print your own Advent calendar and Christmas ornaments at home

Dec.18, 2012

An Advent calendar is a special calendar used to celebrate the days in anticipation of Christmas. The origins of the Advent calendar came from Germany and it appeared at the beginning of the 19th century. An Advent calendar has the rectangular form with 24 windows, representing each day of December leading up to Christmas Day. Different items can be put inside the windows, such as a toy, a chocolate, or an image, poem etc.

Peter Leppik started his 3D printed Advent calendar at the beginning of December. He asked on Thingiverse if anyone could submit some great ideas for the calendar and got a lot of feedback and ideas from makers. So what is the progress now? The calendar has now 19 days of parts. There are still 6 parts waiting to be added before it is completed.

(Credit: Peter Leppik)

Well, someone can't wait: Richrap has started creating his own 3D printed Advent calendar. Inspired by Pleppik, each day Richrap and his kids selected their favorite Christmas things from Thingiverse and printed them out to put on their trees. This is the progress up to now:

(Credit: Richrap)

This is not all. Why buy your Christmas tree ornaments when you can make them with a 3D printer? Richrap and his family have had a lot of joy from creating their Christmas creations on 3D printers, the Christmas tree, snowman, robots, butterfly, and many snowflakes. It may sounds pretty easy for the technology, but this is possibly the most interesting way to celebrate the holidays with your family.

(Credit: Richrap)

Another interesting 3D printed present from Richrap is stacking box set, sort of Russian doll style that you can scale them to fit into each other. "Over the last few months I have printed more than I can count of these, the smallest being about 7mm and the biggest so far printed on a Rostock printer at about 186mm wide." Follow Richrap's progress here.

(Credit: Richrap)

Or, you prefer your Christmas ornament to be a bit more custom this year? Cubify launched a new Ornaments App, an easy drag-and-drop interface that lets you customize your ornaments and then ready to be printed on the Cube 3D printer or your own printer. You can choose from a dozen ornament bases (snowflakes, a gingerbread man, and more), then add some decoration such as bells and holly leaves. You can even put in a special message for a loved one. Try them out here.